An investigation on the relationship between the reading habits of 5th grade elementary school students and their Turkish lesson academic achievement

This study in the 2008-2009 academic year, investigates whether reading habits of 5th primary school students whom are randomly chosen in the district of Diyarbakır and it?s towns and villages, effects their turkish lesson academic achievement or not.The effects of gender differences, education level of parents, the level of family income , the place of residence and academic achıevement on the reading habits of totally 768 students is analysed in the research. In addition, surveys of students the answers to be confirmed by their own teachers and 23 classroom teachers with the aim of semi-structured interviews were conducted using the interview form. For the data which were obtained from the questionnaire, frequency distribution and Chi-square techniques were performed. In the analysis, the level of significance was taken as p?.05.The outcome of the research can be summarised as follows: Female students have been reading more books than male students. The effect of the mothers? level of education on the reading habits is higher than the fathers?. If level of family income rises, level of students? reading habit will rise, too. As the place of residence becomes smaller, the level of reading falls. The reading habits of pupil studying in province and district center schools are higher than the ones who study in suburbian schools. Finally, the reading habits differ with students? academic achievement level.Keywords: Turkish Language Teaching, Reading Habits, Academic Achievement,